How can we improve plastic recycling ?

Hi everyone!
I am student in plastics engineering and am interested in plastics recycling.
As you probably know, the most popular drawback of plastic is that it’s very polluting. The problem is that so much people just throw up plastics scraps into nature, or put it in the ordinary bin, whereas plastic can be recycled. Nowadays, plastic recycling has been well improved and we should continue on that way.
So, I’m looking for ideas which could be developed to encourage people to sort plastic to recycle them in the most optimum way.
Thank you in advance for your responses.

One of the most difficult things is to get people to understand their impact on the environment and give them the ability to make real changes. It's not enough to educate them on the problem - you need to give them a solution that they can easily take part in. I recycle simply because I have a blue recycling bin and a gray trash bin. It's easy for me to do. When I was in NYC, that wasn't the case so I didn't recycle nearly as much. Occasionally my landlord would put out a separate bin out and we would all dump our recycling in there so fast.

There is only so much the public can do to make changes like these. The rest need to slowly start happening with the manufacturers themselves - using less plastic in packaging, giving people alternatives to buying plastic water bottles, etc.

Dec 23 2013:
There are plastics that decompose reasonably easily. The most important part is most epoxy resins.

Some products are better made from a non-self-destructing material too, so a wide scale ban is the wrong thing to do. What needs to be cut is frivolous use, such as water bottles, bags, shoes, general purpose clothing.

In most places plastic can be replaced with materials such as glass, fabrics, metals, wood or wood-like products (using epoxy glues).

The main thing plastics have going for them is that they're easy to mass produce by injection moulding. You cannot do that with fabrics or pure wood, but it is possible. The other problem is making the replacement materials light enough. Who wants something that does the same thing but weighs twice as much or is twice as expensive?

Dec 17 2013:
What? I can be supplied a clean recycled plastic water bottle, but I can't get a clean drink of water from a spigot? Something's not right. Who sold us on the idea of water in a plastic bottle anyway? Follow the money and you'll know.

Dec 24 2013:
I agree. Who is one of the largest bottlers of drinking water? Non other than Coca Cola.
I did a tour in Iraq in 07-08 and the roadways were littered with plastic water bottles as far as the eye could see. Very depressing.

kids will collect and sort anything if they belive it is in aid of a cause, so a school focused collection drives would be the way forward. the trick is to incentivise the schools to collate it

this could be in the form of "tokens" for each ton of plastic that a school collects redemable for equipment or educational trips and funded either by donations from the recycling companies or preferably the companies creating the surplus plastics, the incentive for the companies is that donations are tax deductable and good for corporate image

it would also be interesting to have items which the schools could buy back or receive in lew of donated plastics, such as play equipment/ picnic benches/ decking etc which are already made from recycled plastics

or even clothing made from recycled plastics, such as jackets, school bags etc

Dec 15 2013:
I am an old goat - so my first idea was that goats eat everything, so just have everyone get a goat and the goats will eat the plastic and do the recycling for us (that's supposed to be a joke).
More seriously, in the "olden days" governments wanted to reduce discarded glass, so through legislation they decreed that when you bought a drink that came in a glass bottle the store checkout would add 5 cents (American) for each bottle which would be added on to your bill and be called a bottle deposit. Later on when you finished drinking your bottles you could bring the empties back to the store and get your 5 cents per bottle back - the bottles would go back to the bottler and be reused. A lot of empty bottles never made it back to the store, but kids would earn spare change by scouring all over the place for bottles that they could bring into the store for the 5 cents per bottle deposit.

Aluminum cans proved easier to do than glass because aluminum has relatively high intrinsic value - so most towns have active aluminum recycling available and this is all private sector driven - no government legislation required.

Since plastic has low intrinsic value I suspect you would have to go a route similar to the glass bottle route - that is by legislation put a monetary deposit on plastic containers. To handle the diversity of plastic types you might need a bar code or other type indicator to expedite sorting.

Dec 14 2013:
Since you are a student in plastics engineering, please read my suggestion below, see if this is practicable.
Is there a possibility that a relatively small recycling plant, conveniently located in the center, or near center of the city, to recycle the plastics and converting, right in the same facility, into some containers or 'utensils" such as combs, forks and knives, etc. using the newly developed 3D printing machine. If this is possible, then people would like to bring only reasonable amount of used plastic bottles, etc. and trade the recyclable materials for some equivalent utensils as a fair trade. Of course, some or all of these plastic utensils could be pre-manufactured, so the "exchange" needs only one trip for the recycle trader.
As you should know that in most of the cities, the municipality hires collecting workers and trucks and other workers, such that the municipality would end up losing money in carrying out the "recycling service". So a free market trading system would be more efficient.

Dec 16 2013:
Or to take that one step into the future, trade you plastic recyclables for “3D Printer Filament”.
(FYI: “3D Printer Filament” looks just like a spool of weed eater line.)
So instead of paying $15 per lb. you can get a cut rate of $10 or less per lb.

Currently people are only printing small one time objects, but in not in the too far off future I can foresee large scale printing projects. Like custom tiles for a restroom or kitchen, personalize mega Lego sets for kids, custom quad-copter frames and blades, etc. etc. etc.

Dec 16 2013:
The Filabot is the first attempt at recycling plastics to make 3d printer filament. However, they seem to have been sidetracked somehow and gotten greedy... http://www.filabot.com/
But I'm betting that we'll see the first good product of a system like this within two years.

And people aren't only making small stuff, there have been printed; Guns, clothes, skulls, bikes, shoes, cars and exoskeletons just to mention some.
You can order a gMax today I believe, it prints 16" x 16" x 9" and if that's not enough you can always but a VX4000 which prints 4m x 2m x 1m...

Dec 16 2013:
My idea of recyclable trading FOR utensils is for the convenience of the consumer/plastics owner to have readily useful commodities he can trade for, Most of the people wouldn't need large amount of filament anyway.

Dec 11 2013:
In my area (US Midwest) we have “Single Stream Recycling” AI: all recyclable materials (Paper, plastic, & metal cans) can be placed in the same recycling container. (Plastic bags still need to be separated) This makes it easier to recycle, I have not heard if or how much this is helping.
PS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-stream_recycling

Personal would love to see and use recycling-exchanges; with a recycling-exchange being a place where you can trade recyclables for near equal amount of building material. AI: empty plastic bottle are traded for plastic chips or sheets, 5-pounds of aluminum cans is traded for 4 pound aluminum bar, etc.

This would encourage people to recycle and learn to build things themselves, like people use to do.

Dec 11 2013:
Here in Oregon recycling is popular. I have a large bin for recycling where we put all paper, cardboard, and certain plastics, and it gets hauled away once a week. The reason we recycle rather than throw this stuff into garbage is that we pay for the garbage (it must fit in one container), while recycling volume is unlimited. If not for the recycling bin, we would need 2 or 3 garbage containers.

A few years ago, recycling company required residents to sort paper, plastic, glass, and scrap metal into separate bins, but now they all can be mixed except glass which is VERY convenient. I agree with Bryan that necessity to sort the junk is a big deterrent for recycling.

There is still a problem - plastic bags cannot be thrown into our home recycling bin. This is a big bummer. Plastic bags make the second largest volume of our waste that does not go into our recycling bin after paper towels. Many grocery stores started to accept plastic bags for recycling. This year, we started to put plastic bags into larger plastic bags instead of throwing them away. Those bundles go into the trunk of our car and when we are at the store, we recycle them. The problem is that we are often driving around with the trunk full of plastic bags for several weeks and forget to recycle them. So, it is still quite inconvenient.

The bottom line of my story - people will use recycling instead of garbage when it will be EASIER and/or CHEAPER for them to recycle than to use garbage. If it takes a special trip somewhere to recycle, very few people would do it. When we had 2 babies, I had to get a larger garbage container from the waste company (diapers) and pay $56 for it instead of $31 or so for the smaller container. I still use the larger container although we don't use diapers any more. $25 is not a huge difference. But if I had to pay $100 more for a larger conatiner, I would, definitely, get a smaller one and get rid of those paper towels as well.

However add in human innovation (Ideas???) and inventiveness; and this mixture could be used to build e.g. artificial reefs incorporating wire mesh to allow coral, to cover them over; blocks for sea walls, to hold back rising sea levels, foundation slabs for construction, the list is only limited by the human imagination.

The outside walls of the solar heated metal vats for melting the plastic could also incorporate pipes, through which sea water would be pumped and heated; this would serve to desalinate the water via distillation, while also supplying steam energy to generate electricity, to be used by the facility.

This brings us to shipping costs; when we consider that shipping costs are already involved in the current practise of dumping western plastic waste, into third world countries; this cannot be said to be an issue.
Sincerely hope this provides a basis; for a flood of related thoughts, comments, and ideas, from TED members.

Dec 31 2013:
Before reading this comment in relation to plastic recycling and disposal, it might be worthwhile to use the WWW to refer to such documentaries as Mega Construction, Mega Factories, Mighty Machines etc. and the reason I say this, because it will show that what I am proposing is perfectly reasonable and feasible.

The first step in dealing with the plastic pollution problem, is the organisation of the gathering in of plastic from the environment, and I am sure many TED members will have ideas in this regard; the second or combined step, is to prevent plastic items being disposed of into the environment, e.g. by placing a returnable deposit on all plastic bottles etc. and setting up plastic collection centres. The next step is to build industrial plastic recycling centres on the coastal regions of very hot “sun-drenched” coastal regions, with shipping ports.

These centres would have very large elevated metal vats, preferably made of heat conducting copper or with heat conducting rods passing through the lower part of the vat; the heat supply needed to melt the flakes of plastic being recycled, would be gained from the sun, using multiple concave solar mirrors to focus its rays onto the external surface of the conductive rods, passing through the lower part of the vat.

Below this vat of the resultant molten plastic; industrial sized mixing machinery and vats, would serve to mix the molten plastic with sand, or waste (crushed) concrete and brick from construction sites. The resultant sand and plastic mixture when cooled into e.g. blocks, would then be heavy enough to sink down into the quiet (no currents to cause plastic erosion) deepest areas of the oceans, which are several kilometres deep.

Dec 29 2013:
Recycling costs energy. The best way to reduce plastic waste is not using plastics. Bring your own bag to the shop, try to use more organic materials which can easily be composted after use.
The industries should be forced to produce less plastic and think twice before they make products which leave tons of plastic after unpacking the product.
Completely ban plastics is an utopia. I agree that some products need plastic. e.g. cucumbers. The plastic around it makes it that less cucumber becomes waste.

Dec 28 2013:
this may seem a little far fetched but I was thinking of filling up hundreds - thousands with sand ,gravel or maybe even some other substance ... not sure , then sinking them in the ocean to form a base for a reef . Im not sure if the corals would attach to the plastic may have to punch holes in the bottles so the sand would come out .

Dec 30 2013:
they would not be just floating around on the ocean floor , they would be enclosed in a ss mesh bag then anchored to the floor no chance on getting eaten by a hungry sea,l shark, octopus, etc...

Dec 30 2013:
While I appreciate the idea of trying to do something good for the ocean I don't think that this is the right way to go.

If we made a steel mesh containing plastic, plastic would still leak out unless the mesh was extremely fine, which would be of great cost. You see, plastic continues to break into smaller and smaller particles through time and those particles would in time leak and be digested by the smaller creatures of the ocean and then proceed to move up the food chain through digestion.

Also the cost of transporting the plastic to ships and then to locations on open sea would indeed be of great cost. And there is no use for any sea creatures of plastic. There is however use for different species of the oceans for different metals like iron and steel.

Some projects around the world are producing iron mesh frames that are then dropped into the ocean, and in time coral reefs grow on them. Thailand has even dropped old tanks (the kind used by the military, not containers) into the ocean to help in the formation of coral reefs.

Dec 25 2013:
Recycling is not the answer as it still needs fossil fuel, to convert, remould, transport it etc. and the production of plastic is increasing, outstripping recycling and landfill.

The world does not get it!! plastic is purified bitumen/tar/oil solidified, and poisonous to life; and it is constantly recycled in our oceans, as it chokes or poisons sea birds and (On the island of Midway a major breeding ground for the Albatross, every dead bird and dead chick autopsied, had plastic items in their stomachs) and marine life; and as their bodies decompose, it is then released to kill/murder, over and over again.

The Corporate production of cheap nasty plastic crap, is constantly increasing; despite their awareness that plastic is accumulative and disastrous; as nature cannot get rid of it. It is truly a "Corporate Driven Evil" and inhuman obscenity; that there are entire beaches made of plastic granules rather than sand; and smaller granules are being ingested and digested by marine life; which will be forced to evolve to metabolize hydrocarbons in order to survive; then add in Corporate driven petro chemical pollution, ocean acidification, overfishing, and climate change; I do not see much hope for any warm blooded species, as long as these avaricious by proxy genocidal maniacs, are given free reign.

Q. Given. oil has to go through more processes, in order to become plastic, than does petrol which is simply distilled; how its it that we can buy a large moulded and coloured plastic item, for less than we pay for a litre of petrol.

A. Because big businesses can purchase oil and derivatives, for a tiny fraction of the price we have to pay for petrol. To the point; that plastic is so cheap to manufacture, it is now being used to make "trillions" of kids sweet wrappers/sweet bags/sweet containers, each day of the year: All of which end up in landfill, sewers, rivers, and the oceans, and are unneeded, we did not need them 50 years ago; and we need rid of them now

Dec 24 2013:
I live in Germany since 2011 and I really can see the difference with Italy when we talk about recycling and the answer is..MONEY!
When you go to the supermarket and buy a plastic bottle, you pay it the normal cost + 25 cents for "pfand" = caution. Then it's your choice: you can throw the bottle away and lose your money or bring it back to the store and get your money back.
25 cents sound like nothing, but if you add 25+25+25..at the end of the year it's quite a lot!

Dec 18 2013:
Two things that control what and how people do things: Convenience and rewards.
Make it more convenient to recycle. Most people will not seek out the recycle bin to recycle. More locations need to have more spots to recycle. But not just restaurants and stores either. Lake Michigan is near my home and the areas by the lake are full of garbage. But if more recycling cans/bins were around we could significantly cut down on the litter as well as get more recyclables. Second, people save up cans to get that 5 cents per can. Similar rewards should be given for pastic aterials.

Dec 18 2013:
Thank you very much for starting this conversation Julie, it's great to see the different approaches being taken to this issue all over the world. Existing approaches that I favour are recycling bins alongisde rubbish bins in the street as well as the home, and the charge on bottles and cans which is refunded if you return the material.

I am working on a project en ce moment on trying to incentivise better social responsibility and behaviour among households. The goal is to formulate an index of how a community performs on a number of variables - percentage of waste recycled, average electricity consumed per household, blood donations, charitable donations, and 3 others - which will allow communities to be ranked on a leaderboard based on how socially responsible they are. Top-performing communities will be rewarded with a periodic prize fund and/or discounts from service providers.

Dec 17 2013:
I don't know much about plastic recycling methods but I think that we (consumers)can change the trend of companies. If we start purchasing echo friendly products and cosmetics etc which are packed in 100% post consumer recycled bottles, the companies will surely change their packing according to trend. There are a few stores which are offering echo friendly products likehttp://www.naturalorganiccare.co.uk , Dr. Bornner products and many more

Dec 11 2013:
Ms. Nawfal, I am witness as we all are to this tragic age of disposable products and I commend you on your goals for making this a healthier planet. I would like to suggest two ideas which may be of value to your quest. In Maine we have a refund value for plastic bottles and aluminum can which could be taken to a store put in a machine and a refund slip would appear at the end of the transaction. My other thought is a little more psychological, it would involve getting our roles models out in the public's eye to lead by example. Here in the states many young adults and children have role models be it musicians, athletes and dare I say politicians who they aspire to. Your challenge is noble and I commend you on your choice for it is our present that dictates our future. People such as you give hope to myself and others that apathy for our planet and civilization will one day join the great brains and spirit that we are blessed with .I thank you

Dec 11 2013:
But Pat has a very valid point. Financial gain would be really good for this, then people would think that they were throwing away money, not junk.

In Sweden we have the recycling of cans and plastic bottles and over 98% of all cans and bottles are recycled because throwing them is a huge waste of money (a can costs about $0.15 and a bottle 4 times that).

And the cans that people do throw away are picked up by homeless people, Gothenburg has even made their trash bins two-split, one for the trash and one for the recycling that homeless people can take without needing to go through the trash.

Give the same economic incentive with plastics and we'd see none in the streets or in nature.

Dec 11 2013:
You are right guys! Thanks for all your replies.
There is also such a system here, in France : people just pay for each kilo of waste they put in bins.
But what about thinking of something without financial gain ?
The idea of recylcing without sorting seems good, but it's chemically problematic... We have to work on it !

Dec 11 2013:
We're just starting to implement the "pay by kilo" here, it's resulted in much more trash in public spaces and nature... I think the costs are greater then the gains for this, or maybe it's a passing phase...

There's a difference between financial punishment and opportunity for financial gain...

Dec 11 2013:
I lived in a city that had forced recycling. The efforts to which people would go to avoid it were probably more costly than the effort to do the recycling, but people still did it because they resented government intruding into YET ANOTHER PART OF LIFE. Likewise, since it was government, any entity with political influence found ways to get exempted. Government cannot be trusted.

Dec 17 2013:
"Financial gain would be really good for this, then people would think that they were throwing away money, not junk."

I got the giggles when I read this because I learnt years ago that our rubbish tips (in New Zealand) had a process of dumping all plastic milk bottles in one area (in the hope that a solution could be found and the plastic easily retrieved) so I could just see the headline "Dump Heist...Robbers steal 52 tonnes of plastic!"
;-D

I have just started an "Ideas" conversation titled "Hot plastic and sand mixing; for disposal or re-moulding" and a little later I will be expanding on the original idea in order to include; the recovery of the precious metals from electrical appliances, and electronic components.

I have just started an "Ideas" conversation in regard to and titled "Hot plastic & sand mixing; for disposal and/or re-moulding"
and shall be expanding on the original idea a little later, in regard to recovering the precious metals from electronic equipment and components, and thus recycling them.

Jan 8 2014:
A little divergent thinking here, how about the manufactures of all this plastic start making the containers multipurpose? For example I but the dog treats the come in the square plastic, large lid plastic containers and I save them and reuse them in to store small items. I could empty plastic bottles but with the round odd shapes and small lids, they are only designed for one use.

So what if lot of the plastic packaging could be stacked like Lagos, stuffed with plastic bags and be used to build stuff. Bottles that would have female screw bottoms an male screw tops so people could make long useful tubes.

Jan 8 2014:
For every tenth plastic and its plastic deravative manufacture, there could be the law governing for 11 th plastic produce to be an recycled or reused version of the same... Be it any plastic range from 1-6..
I am Assistant Professor from India, would be able to shell out few ideas on Reverse Logistics On Plastic Management.
Well, my research Topics of Interest..
Please feel free to comment on the above idea and open to discussion.

Jan 8 2014:
Plastic not recycling is a bad habit. Bad habit are easy, good habits require forethought, and work. It's easy through marketing to sell bottled water, and ignore the bottles result.
The solution to plastics, is to not make anything out of plastics, that is not recyclable. This can be done, and eventually will be forced to do it, or we suffer big issues. The plastic industry produces unrecyclable plastics, because they can, and no one, no one, is telling or forcing or regulating, not to.
Just ask them, and they will tell you, they will not change until they are made to, period. In Europe, all cars have to be 99% recyclable! there are no piles of dead cars there. It must and will change here, only, when the public, demands, a better habit, of dealing with plastics.
We are now beginning to chock on plastics, our oceans are so dirty from plastics, all animal life has plastics in their stomachs. It is killing the life in all of the oceans.

Jan 7 2014:
it's been done. there's even a ted talk on it (search for 'mike biddle'). all that's needed is for governments to build the plants and write the legislation that ensures plastics are collected and recycled.

As individuals, we can commit to using glass containers and refraining from using any disposable plastics in our daily lives. There is no amount of recycling we could do to reverse the damage. Correction must be done at the production factory level. When we keep on consuming, factories will keep on producing. So a great start is stopping our buying on our end :)

Jan 6 2014:
I saw a system of recycling based on rewards. In this city, there was a monthly charge for trash removal. Then a new recycle can was issued with with instructions that recycled materials in these cans would not be charged for removal. And since most residents would need smaller cans for regular trash, the charge would be reduced. It was about half. There was an estimated 85% compliance with the new program.
The city sorted metal, glass, plastics and paper from the recycle cans and the sale of these products about covered the cost of the program.
Would these program work everywhere? I think so. The only weakness is the marketability of the sorted products.

Jan 4 2014:
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Hi Julie
I particularly like the simple effective smiley face speed trap, which works so well for speeding traffic in school zones. People need immediate positive feedback, even competitive prompts (the plastics recycled from your neighbor three houses down weighed X amount and yours weighs Y amount. Or have kids get caught "green handed" and even a green stamp or sticker for recognition as a badge of pride. Bonus points at local retailers may work wonders. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/30/8-clever-and-innovative-w_n_736668.html#s144130&title=Green_Handed_Prize

As far as techniques are concerned, there seems to be a few methods that are worth doing. Dianna Cohen mentions how poisonous the by-products of plastics recycling can be.

Jan 3 2014:
Like it or not, people generally always take the path of least resistance. I work in the public sector and often see people propose all sorts of ideas requiring people to do various things on their end, but the bottom line is that if something is complicated or requires a lot of time, people won't do it. Do I take half an hour from my busy day to drive to a battery recycling center as the law requires, or do I just hide my dead batteries in the rubbish? Most people choose the latter (fortunately, we have a battery recycling bin at work).

For plastic recycling, we need to rely more on the manufacturers of plastic than on the users of that plastic. The sad truth is most people won't spend a lot of time separating their plastics into various numbered bins. However, if manufacturers make plastic more standardized, this won't matter. It can all just be recycled together.

What do you think of thermo catalytic depolymerisation as it relates to plastic waste disposal?

when plastics are recycled, does the new product have as much quality as products made from virgin plastic? for how many generations? do you think it would be possible now or in the near future to use recycled plastic indefinitely over and over?

My thoughts on plastic recycling is that the different colored recycling bins are very effective. Here in India, there are people who come to your house and weigh recyclable materials and pay you for it by weight. I don't know if plastic is included in that or what the price is since I give all my recyclable to a homeless guy.

I really think that the whole idea of landfill should be reevaluated into a "sorted holding area for non biodegradables"

Jan 1 2014:
This summer, I made a training in a company which recycles all the production's waste. As I saw, you can recycle plastic indefinitely, but the recycled plastic wasn't used totally in the production : it was used for 70% maximum in the raw materials (70% of recycled plastic and 30% of virgin plastic, colored plastic etc.). We are able nowadays to make products with 100% recycled plastic.

For the problem of quality, it's true that recycled plastic has not the same quality as virgin plastic (it's still a good one). That's why we need to improve plastic recycling. We need only 16 plastic bottles to make a pullover !

Dec 30 2013:
At Greenbuild this year (Philadephia), the carpet tile company, Inteface, did an amazing presentation on how they're harvesting abandoned fishing nets in the Philippines and other Pacific areas and converting them to carpet fiber. The whole story is pretty amazing, and has so many impacts that are positive for the people. Banking, jobs, recycling, cleaning up the ocean, International relations, zoological society work, and beyond. Link here: https://www.facebook.com/InterfaceAmericas/app_578933638794319

Perhaps similar programs could be created and implemented to reclaim other plastics from roadsides and other undesirable areas. There would be harvesters, central collection points, markets identified and logistics including shipping taken care of. Ambitious, but interesting I think.

Dec 30 2013:
I would say that as as lot of people have been saying the key issue is in awareness. More people are taking an interest in saving energy but the true benefits of recycling are less clear. So I would suggest a labelling system similar to the nutritional information that has become a law to include in the UK there could be a colour coded system informing the consumer of the carbon footprint of the product, although a new measuring system may be usefull as I have no idea how much 38grams of carbon really is. Or you could do the opposite and inform people how much energy they are saving if they recycle the item but put in terms of everyday things like how long you could power a light bulb or phone for. Putting either of these on the packaging would make it much more difficult to ignore so might help encourage poeple to recycle. But I am not an expert just a design student with an interest in eco friendly design.

Dec 30 2013:
I write a blog with theoretic leads and solutions to hundreds of humanitarian problems. One of these is about a modal for B-grade vegetables and fruits, to coock them. Well for this I needed plastic at bottom prices so I thought recycling plastic. Well I figurred it is good if certain products their plastic become the same good for easy recycling, and ths to collect specificly. It is pure wilderness at this stage, it needs to uniform plastic packedging.

Dec 30 2013:
As a plastics engineering student, you know more about the molecular properties of plastics, so maybe you would know better. Can all plastis be regulated so that they all have at least one similar property enabling them to be manipulated better after they have been produced? I have found it frustrating that most of the plastic used to produce usable structural products cannot effectively be glued together with out remelting or expensive glueing procedures and products. The plastic I like to work with the most is PVC as it has an easy and cheap way of gluing it so as enabling me to remake structures with it. This would enable people to repurpose many plastic products that would otherwise be discarded because the products shape no longer serves its purpose. For example, I recently used old plastic laundry tubs to build a modular portable hydroponics system. one of the challenges was finding ways to fasten other plastic parts to the tubs because the plastic used to make the tubs was not pvc but another form of plastic that I couldn't find any "affordable" ways to glue anything to it with good strong bonds. I was able to accomplish my design due in large part to my selection of the preformed tubs already had most of the functional forms molded into it already and the other penetrations and attachments were done with mechanical fittings. So, perhaps regulating the plastics industry to formulate them so as they can all be rebuilt easier, remolded or at least find a cheap glue that works on them all.

Dec 30 2013:
We should use the advantage of plastic that is it last for long time in environment. We can make non useful things to use full by creativity. By using plastic we can make furniture, momentos, doors etc so many things......
Buy doing this we can use the plastic as well as we can create employment in in this filed.....